In the sentence “My question is ‘is there such a term?’.”, the repeated ‘is’ is grammatically legitimate. Likewise “What it is is football”. But what your article names the “reduplicative copula” is a mistake that in spoken English has become so common within the last decade or two that now I think I hear it more often than not. You all know what I mean, right?

“The thing is is that we should do the movie first.”

It originally came from a thoughtful pause. “The thing is…. [the speaker stops to think, then takes up the sentence again] ….is that we should do the movie first.” But I hear it all the time now in sentences with no pause; and I’m convinced that most people are completely unaware of doing it. I try not to let things drive me crazy, but this one gives me trouble.

2013/12/109:37pm

RobertB

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It’s easy to see this is grammatically legitimate: (How can you go wrong paraphrasing Clinton’s immortal words?)